Free The Human Division by John Scalzi Page A

know,” Wilson said. “It’s best you don’t know. I want to make sure you have plausible deniability.”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Schmidt said.
    “Exactly,” Wilson said, and cut his connection to his friend.
    A few minutes later, Wilson floated weightless inside the airless cabin of the shuttle, face masked, holding the guide handle next to the shuttle door. He slapped the door release button.
    And saw nothing outside.
    Which is not as it should have been; Wilson’s BrainPal should have picked up and enhanced starlight within visible wavelengths. He was getting nothing.
    Wilson reached out with the hand not gripping the guide handle. Nothing. He repositioned himself, bringing his body mostly outside of the door, and reached again. This time there was something there.
    Something big and black and invisible.
    Hello, Wilson thought. What the hell are you?
    The big, black, invisible thing did not respond.
    Wilson pinged his BrainPal for two things. The first was to see how long it had been since his face mask had gone on; it was roughly two minutes. He’d have just about five minutes before his body started screaming at him for air. The second was to adjust the properties of the nanobotic cloth of his combat unitard to run a slight electric current through his unitard’s hands, soles and knees, the current powered by his own body heat and friction generated through movement. That achieved, he reached out again toward the the big, black, invisible object.
    His hand clung to it, lightly. Hooray for magnetism, Wilson thought.
    Moving slowly so as not to accidentally and fatally launch himself into space, Wilson left the shuttle to go exploring.
    *   *   *
    “We have a problem,” Wilson said. He was back on the conference call with Coloma and Abumwe. Schmidt hovered behind Abumwe, silent.
    “ You have a problem,” Coloma said. “You were ordered to return that shuttle forty minutes ago.”
    “We have a different problem,” Wilson said. “I’ve found a missile out here. It’s armed. It’s waiting for the Utche. And it’s one of ours.”
    “Excuse me?” Coloma said, after a moment.
    “It’s another Melierax Series Seven,” Wilson said, and held up the black box. “It’s housed in a small silo that’s covered in the same wavelength-absorbing material this thing is. When you run the standard scans, you won’t see it. Hart and I only saw it because we ran a highly-sensitive thermal scan when we were looking for the black box, and even then we didn’t give it any thought because it wasn’t what we were looking for. When I was looking through the Polk data, there was an explosion that seemed to come out of nowhere, before the Polk was attacked by the ship and missiles we could see. My brain put two and two together. I passed by this thing on the way to black box. I stopped this time to get a closer look.”
    “You said it’s waiting for the Utche,” Abumwe said.
    “Yes,” Wilson said.
    “How do you know that?” Abumwe asked.
    “I hacked into the missile,” Wilson said. “I got inside the silo, pried open the missile control panel and then used this.” He held up the CDF standard connector.
    “You went on a spacewalk ?” Schmidt said, over Abumwe’s shoulder. “Are you completely insane ?”
    “I went on three,” Wilson said as Abumwe turned to glare at Schmidt. “I was limited by how long I could hold my breath.”
    “You hacked into the missile,” Coloma said, returning to the subject.
    “Right,” Wilson said. “The missile is armed and it’s waiting for a signal from the Utche ship.”
    “What signal?” Coloma asked.
    “I think it’s when the Utche ship hails us,” Wilson said. “The Utche send their ship-to-ship communications on certain frequencies, different from the ones we typically use. This missile is programmed to home in on ships using those frequencies. Ergo, it’s waiting for the Utche.”
    “To what end?” Abumwe